


Levar

by evening_spirit



Category: FBI: Most Wanted (TV 2020)
Genre: Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, but i don't promise anything, graphic depiction of mental distress, maybe there will be comfort eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29338059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evening_spirit/pseuds/evening_spirit
Summary: Memory was slowly returning. He and Crosby were on their way to question a witness. A weird old guy who lived far out of town, in the woods. A guy who might have seen something. It was late, the sun was setting and they were less than a mile out, when shots were fired.
Relationships: Kenny Crosby & Jess LaCroix
Comments: 12
Kudos: 9





	Levar

**Author's Note:**

> )* Levar - one hundred and twenty days wind - a strong summer wind occurring from late May to late September in Sistan Basin (eastern Iran and western Afghanistan)

Jess was no stranger to pain, had his fair share of cuts and bruises, a broken bone here and there, broken ribs once and two gunshot wounds. He could tell, even before he opened his eyes, that he had been shot. The way pain seared and stabbed at his shoulder, suggested it was being tended to. A grunt escaped his lips at an especially brutal jolt.

“Easy, easy,” he heard a familiar voice. Crosby. “I’m almost done.”

“What--” he started and didn’t have the strength to finish.

He was more-or-less understood.

“You got shot,” Crosby explained what happened. He was speaking in a low, urgent voice. “I’ve almost got you patched up, just a few more seconds and you’ll be good to go.”

Memory was slowly returning. He and Crosby were on their way to question a witness. A weird old guy who lived far out of town, in the woods. A guy who might have seen something. It was late, the sun was setting and they were less than a mile out, when shots were fired. First one hit the right headlight, the second one ricocheted off the hood of the car and then Jess swerved, but it didn’t do much good, apparently, as the third round hit him in the shoulder and then the car hit a tree, and he blacked out.

It was completely dark now, they were several paces away from the smoking car – apparently Crosby pulled him away. Some time had passed, but podobały not a lot.

“Are you hurt?” he managed to grunt out.

Crosby shook his head. As he was dressing up his wound, he kept darting his eyes left and right, watching out for danger.

Someone had shot at them. That someone was still out there.

“Have you contacted-- Argh!” The pain stole his voice again.

“Sorry,” Crosby whispered, then, “No. Radio isn’t working.” Radio? “We’re on our own, man.” Crosby looked into Jess’s eyes with forceful intensity. “You think you’re up for a little stroll?”

“Have you--” Jess started again and had to take a breath. The pain was clouding his thoughts. “--tried your cell-phone?” he managed the question.

Crosby looked at him with an unreadable expression. It was dark and Jess couldn’t really decipher what was happening.

“Let me see your eyes.” There was an edge in Crosby’s voice. Eerie quiet.

Jess blinked as a lighter shone into his pupils.

Crosby’s gaze was assessing, worried.

“You don’t seem to have a brain trauma, but…” he muttered, then shook his had. “You think you can stand?”

Damn it. Jess could feel that something was off, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it and he decided it best to just rely on his uninjured colleague. His head throbbed. He might not have a serious brain injury, but a concussion was pretty much a given. His legs felt tired and wobbly and his shoulder... His shoulder pretty much screamed at him, leaving little-to-no room for attention to anything else.

If Crosby said they had to get out of here, then they had to get out of here.

“Good,” Crosby said as Jess was pretty much upright, still eyeing the darkness of the woods around them. “Lean on me.” His breathing was fast and shallow, he didn’t seem to be well at all, damn it. Jess couldn’t turn off his concern and just rely on someone else. He was the leader here, he needed to at least be able to properly assess the situation.

“You think you have-- ugh! damn it-- have any idea who shot at us?”

“Pretty sure it was the Hajis.” Crosby chuckled, but there was something in this sound that made Jess’s skin crawl.

Haji? Where did he hear that term?

“Last we pinged them, they were about two click south. Have no idea where they came from, but at least it’s dark now, so it gives us cover. Gotta stay quiet though.”

Jess stopped dead in his tracks.

“Crosby--”

“You good? Can you walk? Because if you can’t, we can try and rest some, but we gotta drive on, man. Don’t want sunrise to catch us in country.” The way he spoke-- short, jerky sentences, alarmed, jittery. It felt familiar. But he couldn’t think when he was in pain, when he had to focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

“Yeah,” he breathed out, “let’s-- let’s stop for a moment.”

They got back down, Crosby helped Jess to sit against a tree, while he crouched and looked around, gun in hand.

What was he seeing?

Hajis. It was a derogatory term military men in Iraq and Afghanistan used for the enemy there. ‘In country’ meant in the foreign territory, in a combat zone.

Jess stared at Crosby and a cold grip of terror clawed its way up his gut. Here he was, wounded and semi-conscious, an armed stranger running in the woods, still posing a real danger, and Crosby...

Crosby’s head was somewhere in Afghanistan.

He had to pull him back to the present. But he had to be very careful about how he did it.

“Crosby,” he lightly touched his subordinate’s knee. “Kenny,” waited for the other man to look at him, then, “I need you to do something for me.”

Crosby’s focus shifted immediately. “No.” He grabbed Jesse’s good arm with his free hand. “Hey!” He pulled his face really close. “No talking like that, okay? We’re getting out of here, alright? Both of us.”

Shit! If he wanted to find something more alarming to say to Crosby right now, he probably couldn’t come up with anything better.

“No,” he tried. “It’s not that, it’s nothing like that.” He grabbed Crosby’s arm and kept him in place, held his gaze. “I need you to tell me,” he said slowly in a voice as quiet and soothing as he could muster, “where we are?”

Crosby kept looking at him, mouth open, blinking. His inhales and exhales were quick, ragged, beads of sweat on his forehead pooled together and one trickled down his temple. He shook his head, then gave a whole-body shudder. “We-- I--” he glanced to the side, moaned incomprehensibly, then closed his eyes.

“Crosby--”

“Helmand province,” his voice sounded brittle, like cracked glass, “just out of Baghran--”

“Open your eyes.”

Crosby did as he was told, shook his head, his grip on Jess’s arm causing pain that rivaled the wound in the other shoulder.

“Look around, Crosby, what do you see?”

“No, we gotta go!” Crosby pleaded. “We gotta get out of here!” He started to pull Jess upward, but Jess resisted.

“Not before you are with me.” He grabbed Crosby’s wrist and yanked his hand away from his arm. “There!” He pushed his palm against the tree bark behind his back. “What is that? What are you touching now?”

Crosby’s eyes were unfocused, tendons in his wrist working under Jess’s fingers.

“Tree bark,” he uttered. “I’m touching a tree bark. 's not real,” he grunted through gritted teeth.

“The tree bark is real, Crosby. What kind of tree is it?”

Crosby was so tense, Jess was afraid he might implode. His shoulders began to tremble, his face glistened with sweat despite the dark.

“Pine,” he whispered. “It’s a forest, we’re in a forest in Maryland, ten miles south of Westminster.” He could barely speak, he started to shake so hard his teeth clattered. He closed his eyes again. “We have to get out, we are in danger.”

“I know we are, Crosby. Kenny. But you gotta-- Open your eyes!” Jess grabbed his face with his good hand. “You hear me? You gotta stay with me!”

“I gotta--” Crosby blinked, “yeah. I gotta stay with you.” He looked around, the trees, the darkness, their car several paces back. “What about Jackson?”

Who?

Jess wanted to scream. He was slipping too, barely on the edge of consciousness from pain and blood loss. He needed Crosby to be able to take care of them both!

Which wasn’t gonna happen, obviously. Jess took a breath, as deep as pain allowed him and puffed it out. Screaming would have the opposite effect to what he needed now. He had to speak calmly, quietly.

“Jackson isn’t here.” He said with emphasis. “You hear me, Kenny? It’s just you and me.” Crosby met his eyes. Good. “Who am I?”

Crosby glared at him, panting and struggling to remember. To stay in the present. “Jess LaCroix,” he mouthed. “Supervisory Special Agent Jess Lacroix, with the FBI.” Jess could barely hear the words, but they were the right words, at least. “Me too. I’m FBI too. Special Agent Kenny Crosby. With the FBI. It’s 2021. We are in Maryland, not Helmand. This is a pine tree and there are no pine trees in Helmand, not near Baghran anyway.”

“Yes.” Don’t think about Baghran, Kenny, don’t. “We are in Maryland and it’s 2021. We’re in America.”

“We gotta get out of here.”

“That we do. But we should move toward the road. And first we have to contact our people.”

“Radio isn’t working.”

Damn radio again!

“Kenny. We’re in Maryland, 2021 and we are with the FBI. We’ll use a cell-phone.” Jess reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It wasn’t broken at least. “If we’ve got a signal of course…” he said turning on the display.

This was a mistake.

“What the hell are you doing?” Crosby seethed and slapped the phone out of his hand. It rolled into the sheathing, out of Jess’s reach. “No lighters! Do you want them to see us? Are you crazy?”

“Crosby!”

But he was too weak and too late. Crosby grabbed him in half and lifted him off the ground in one smooth motion. Damn, the man was strong.

“I’ll carry you,” he grunted. “We gotta find a better place to hide.”

Jess wanted to protest, he really did, but instead he found himself slipping out of consciousness once more.

**Author's Note:**

> ‘kay, so. This is my first foray into this universe and with those characters. And I don’t even know if there is a fandom for such stories here, so... Let me know if you liked it ;) But honestly, I can’t promise there will be more. I haven’t really written a lot in the last few years and I don’t know if I can get back to it. This was more like a self-indulgence thing, than an actual fic. But maybe. Mostly depends on what happens on the show, you kno... Inspiration and all that.  
> Anyway, thank you for reading. Take care!


End file.
